Can we stop demonizing each other over the West Bank - opinion

I have lived in Judea and Samaria for years now, raising children who know every winding road and ancient olive grove as home. And still, when the conversation turns to “the settlements,” I often feel the same weary frustration I imagine many of you on the other side feel when you hear the word “settler.”

We talk past each other. We caricature each other.

I want to say something plainly, as one Jewish woman to another, as one Zionist to another: I have tried to keep an open mind about the peace experiments of the last three decades. Even when my gut screamed that they would end in blood.

I was open to the Oslo Accords. I read the newspapers, listened to the speeches, and forced myself to consider the possibility that handing weapons and territory to Yasser Arafat might somehow produce a partner for peace. I knew the risks: further Palestinian intransigence, a corrupt leadership that would pocket aid money while inciting terror, and, yes, more Israeli deaths.

I didn’t cheer for Oslo, but I didn’t automatically exclude it from contemplation. I wanted to believe.

I didn’t automatically exclude it from contemplation either. I hoped, against the evidence of my own eyes, that maybe this time the land-for-peace formula would work.

I even sat through countless lectures on the two-state solution. I listened as smart, well-meaning people explained why Palestinians deserve a state in the heartland of Jewish history, Judea and Samaria, the very cradle of our biblical and national story. I heard the case that we had to give them the tools of sovereignty, even if it meant creating another corrupt Arab state on land that could one day be turned against us.

I didn’t automatically exclude it from contemplation. I weighed it. I argued with myself. I asked whether my love for the land was clouding my judgment.

That is what openness looks like. It means staring hard at ideas that scare you and still refusing to shut the door.

Yet I have rarely found the same openness from the anti-settler community when the conversation turns to Jewish life in Judea and Samaria. The moment someone suggests developing towns, cities, or commerce here, the response is reflexive rejection. No consideration. No “maybe we should look at the data.” Just an immediate wall.

They refuse to consider what the earliest Zionist leaders, Herzl, Jabotinsky, and the pioneers who drained swamps and planted forests saw: Judea and Samaria as integral, historic Jewish land, even more central than the new neighborhoods that became Tel Aviv.

They refuse to acknowledge that building here is not some fringe project, but the direct continuation of the pioneering Zionist spirit that built this country from sand and idealism. They refuse to weigh the practical benefits, including more housing for young families priced out of the center, commercial growth that strengthens Israel’s economy, and strategic depth that has, time and again, protected the coastal plain.

This is what feels sanctimonious to me. Not disagreement – we have plenty of those inside the settlement movement itself – but the arrogant certainty that their side could not possibly be wrong.

Thirty years of Palestinian terrorism. Thirty years of rejectionism. Thirty years of textbooks that teach children to hate us.

Then comes October 7, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, carried out by the very people we were told would become our peaceful neighbors if only we gave enough.

Even after that horror, even after Palestinians murdered some of their own leaders and peace activists, like Vivian Silver, a woman who devoted her life to coexistence and was slaughtered in her kibbutz home, the anti-settler voices still refuse to pause and ask themselves if they got something wrong.

Maybe the land-for-peace model has failed not because we didn’t try hard enough, but because the other side never wanted it?

I am not asking anyone to change their mind overnight. I am not demanding they suddenly love the settlement enterprise or move here themselves. I am asking for the humility to say, out loud, “We might be wrong.” That is all. Just the intellectual honesty to consider that developing Jewish life in Judea and Samaria might bring commercial vitality, housing relief, and strategic strength.

That it might, in fact, be consistent with the Zionist project they cherish. That half a million of us are not violent extremists but ordinary Jews, doctors, teachers, farmers, and mothers, who love this land the way they do.

I write this in the spirit of sisterhood, not combat. We are all Jews living in the same small, besieged country. We all lost friends and family on October 7. We all want our children to grow up safely.

The anti-settler movement and the settlement community do not have to agree on borders or final status, but we can at least grant each other the basic dignity of assuming good faith. We can at least model for our children what real debate looks like: passionate, informed, and willing to say, “Tell me why you see it differently.”

I am still here and still open to hearing your best arguments. I hope you can find it in yourselves to extend the same courtesy to mine. Not because we will suddenly solve everything, but because only when we stop demonizing each other can we begin the harder, more honest conversation about what kind of Jewish state we actually want to build, together, for the next seventy-eight years and beyond.